


Altitude Specific Dating Rituals

by cowboylakay



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flight Attendants, Flight Attendant Abed Nadir, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Rapper Troy Barnes, a lot of handshaking for some reason, background Jeff/Britta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:28:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28975869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cowboylakay/pseuds/cowboylakay
Summary: Troy Barnes is an up and coming Colorado-based rapper flying out to Los Angeles when he meets a cute flight attendant named Abed Nadir.
Relationships: Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Comments: 12
Kudos: 61





	Altitude Specific Dating Rituals

For all his talk, in truth, Troy’s afraid of airplanes.

He’s watched more than a few movies where a plane crashes, and in almost every single one of them, no one on board survives. Usually, the ones that do survive end up dying later on since you can’t cheat death, or so the  _Final Destination_ movies told him. Other times, if you’re in a plane crash and you survive, you’ll end up on an island with no food and water and you’ll have to fight for your life against it’s inhabitants alongside Evangeline Lilly.

The last part is less believable a few hours later, when he doesn’t see a group of high-profile bodyguards surrounding an even-higher-profile celebrity at the airport. Then again, he doesn’t know a celebrity that would be caught flying  Delta, so he disregards that as a dumb theory and tries to focus instead on the clock ticking by. He’s fiddling with the zipper of his backpack when he hears his flight number get called, then he’s suddenly in line to board.

He scored pretty luckily when he landed a window seat, since that was apparently the best seat on the plane according to his mom, but now that he gets closer to boarding, he feels himself get a little nauseous.  _Come on,_ he thinks to himself as the airport attendants check their tickets,  _you haven’t even gotten on yet. You’ll be fine._

He’s fine up until the point he actually steps on the plane, then it hits him that  _oh shit, I can’t get off unless it’s an emergency now, I think I might shit my pants._ The flight attendants are oblivious to his inner turmoil, though, so they usher him in and tell him how far back his row is. He passes by a few rows till he gets to the middle, all the while repeating in his head,  _row G, seat 13._ The overhead cabin is already open, so he takes his headphones from inside his backpack’s pocket along with his charger, then tries to fit it into the cabin.

He tries exactly two times before he realises his backpack’s too bulky to fit as it is in the cabin. He hears the clicking locks of cabins as they shut around him, while he’s still trying to fit his backpack into the compartment. He’s about to give up shoving it in and just put it in between his legs for the whole flight when someone behind him says, “Here, let me help.”

He turns just in time to be face to face with a slightly taller, skinny man wearing the uniform of the flight attendants, with kind eyes and a handsome nose and holy  _shit,_ this man is  _ beautiful. _ Troy’s stock still for exactly a second (and probably a second too long) before he’s moving and stuttering out a thanks, as the flight attendant turns his bag on it’s side and pushes it in with relative ease. He shuts the cabin door and flashes Troy a charming smile, before turning away to help another passenger with their carry-on baggage.

Dumbfounded, Troy sits down in his chair and stares at his reflection in the tv screen. He hasn’t even left Colorado yet and he already feels struck, but in a different way than he thought he’d feel. He’d seen and been helped by a man so beautiful, who did something so simple and obvious that Troy should’ve realised it, then he proceeded to make a fool of himself.

“Hell,” Troy mutters quietly to himself, rubbing his forehead when he does. His seat-mate, a professionally-dressed, tall man with dirty blond hair and a stubble, arrives a little later and puts his stuff away as Troy holds his head in his hands.

“You nervous?” The guy asks him, and Troy looks up at him. He doesn’t look concerned or worried, looking more neutral and as if he was just asking for the sake of asking.

Troy breathes in and out, adjusting himself in his seat so his back’s against the backrest. “Yeah, kinda. I’ve never left Colorado before.”

“Me neither. I’m gonna go see a friend in L.A., otherwise I’d never have left,” The guy says, taking a seat and unbuttoning his suit jacket. “How about you?”

“Well, I’m going over to meet a few guys for a record deal. I’m a rapper,” Troy explains, and the guy nods thoughtfully. The seatbelt alert dings and they both move to buckle their seatbelts, Troy tightening his in the way he saw on tv. He remembers his manners when he looks at the guy next to him, holding out a hand and saying, “I’m Troy Barnes.”

“Jeff Winger,” The guy, Jeff, introduces, shaking his hand. Troy spots an expensive looking watch when his sleeve rolls back, which has him wondering what bad card he’d been dealt to be flying Delta. “Nice to meet you, Troy. You know, if I’m being honest, I’m a little nervous too, which is probably normal for guys who’ve never been on a plane before.”

Troy sighs, nodding in understanding. “Yeah... it’s just, so many freak accidents happen on planes, you know? Like, how in  _ Final Destination, _the first one, the plane explodes, and no one really knew about it until it happened ‘cause Alex was the only one who—”

He doesn’t even realise that more than thirty minutes has passed since they took off until Jeff excuses himself to the bathroom, causing Troy to glance at his watch and realise that they’d been talking for a while. In that time, Troy told him about how he grew up playing football and dislocated his own shoulders to get out of a football scholarship and proceeded to follow his dreams of becoming a famous rapper during recovery, and Jeff had told him that he’s a lawyer.

“Hello, sir, could I get you anything?”

He’s dragged out of his thoughts when he turns his head and sees the same flight attendant from before, with his cute, tousled hair and pretty smile, pushing a cart of drinks. He blinks before he realises he’s about to make a fool of himself again, and quickly asks, “What’ve you got there?”

“We’ve got water, sparkling water, club soda, Cola, and Sprite,” The flight attendant tells him, gesturing at a tray under the top of the cart.

“There’s a difference between sparkling water and club soda?” Troy asks, unable to stop himself. He’s about to answer when the flight attendant laughs at his question, and  _ fuck _ if he’s mesmerised with the way his eyes crinkle and his pointed teeth show. Corny as it may sound, he thinks his heart _does_ skip a beat.

“Well, according to them, there is, but they’re pretty much just the same,” The flight attendant responds, the laughter having died away and a polite smile put in place. “So, what’ll it be?”

“Um, water,” Troy says airily, still looking at the flight attendant with a nice face and a  really nice laugh. The flight attendant nods and pours a glass of water, handing it to Troy after. Troy gets a glimpse of his clipped-on ID as he reaches over, seeing the name ‘Abed’ and three different country flags. “Thanks, uh, Abed.”

Abed’s smile softens a little, causing Troy’s heart to melt into a pathetic puddle on the floor. “No problem.”

He moves on not long after that, with one more glance at Troy that has him short-circuiting over what it could mean, when Jeff comes back from his bathroom break and sits down with a quiet sigh. He looks at Troy with a raised brow and asks, “What’s up with you? You look... different.”

Troy sips his water to calm himself down a little. “I keep seeing the same, handsome flight attendant and I keep making a fool of myself. I _feel_ different, man.”

Jeff looks out at the distance and spots someone that has him sitting straight, with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth. “I think I get what you mean,” He says, and elaborates no further. Troy looks in the direction Jeff is looking and sees a beautiful, blonde flight attendant talking to Abed, who’s nodding at something she’s saying. Troy can’t help but look at them as they talk, mostly watching Abed, until he notices Troy and smiles, waving at him. Troy, being Troy, freezes up with wide eyes, before he waves stiffly and goes back to looking at his screen.

“So, that’s the guy?” Jeff asks him, judgement free from his tone. Troy nods stiffly, lips pursed as he takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “I see what you mean. I’m more interested in his friend though. I thought I heard her name was Bitter, but that can’t be right,” Jeff mutters, still looking at them. For a guy he’s known for about an hour, Troy finds he kind of likes Jeff. “You think I stand a chance?”

Troy scoffs then, the good-friend override distracting him from his thoughts about Abed. “Of course you do. Look at you, man. You’re built and attractive. You’ll be fine.”

“Oh, no, I know that part. I was talking about my charming personality and general suaveness.”

“You could work on the ego a bit, probably.”

The rest of the flight, Troy found himself sufficiently distracted from both his initial nerves about being on a plane and about the really cute flight attendant guy. He finishes his water and puts it in the holder, stretching his arms upward as he narrowly avoids hitting a sleeping Jeff when he does. He looks at his watch and sees that almost two hours have passed by when the pilot announces they’ll be making a landing soon.

The announcement seems to wake up his seat-mate as Troy scrolls through his playlist, reshuffling over and over again until it landed on a song he wanted to start his playlist with. Jeff is rubbing his eyes with his palms when he says, “Well, our plane didn’t explode and we’re about to make a safe landing in Los Angeles, so all things considered, I think we’re gonna be alright.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Troy nods, secretly very relieved. The seatbelt light flickers on and he puts his seatbelt back on. “Wish you luck on that thing with your friend.”

Jeff smiles at him, holding a hand out. Troy takes it as he says, “Wish you luck on your career. And that flight attendant looking our way right now.”

Troy glances to somewhere ahead of them and sees Abed looking at them, whose eyes widen momentarily like he didn’t expect to get caught before he’s looking away again. It’s just about enough to make Troy feel a little better about himself, filling him with a new-found confidence now that he knows the interest isn’t as one-sided as he thought.

“Thanks, man,” He tells Jeff, and sits back comfortably in his chair, feeling a little good about himself.

Landing takes about all of ten minutes, and when they come to a stop, the seatbelt light dings off as the pilot welcomes them to California. Troy gets up as Jeff does, who opens the compartment and takes his leather satchel, bidding Troy a goodbye before he’s walking down the aisle to the exit. For some reason, Troy decides to hang back a little and let other people pass by as he tried to retrieve his bag, shoved a little further in than he could reach.

“Can I help you with that?” He hears someone ask from behind him, and when he turns, it’s Abed. He smiles at Troy when he looks at him, which causes him to smile too.

“Thanks,” Troy says, stepping aside so Abed can reach into the compartment and get Troy’s bag. He hands it to him as Troy slings it on one shoulder. “My name’s Troy, Troy Barnes,” He says, holding a hand out.

Abed glances at it for a second before taking it and shaking it, a content smile on his face moments later when he looks up. Troy thinks he wants to know what that smile means, preferably over dinner. “Abed Nadir. It’s nice to meet you, Troy.”

“Hey, um, let me know if this is too forward or something,” Troy says, suddenly feeling bashful as he fiddles with the hem of his shirt. Abed tilts his head slightly as if in question, a movement Troy watches with immense fondness already. “Would you... like to go to dinner with me, sometime?”

Abed’s eyes widen a little more and Troy begins to think he’s misread the situation when Abed smiles, a more subdued, gentle one than the one he smiles for others. “Like a date?”

Emboldened, Troy nods, feeling a smile creep onto his face as he does. “Yeah. Like a date.”

Abed’s smile lightly wrinkles his eyes, and Troy feels his heart speed up a little. “Yes, I think I’d like that,” He pats his pockets for a bit before sighing quietly, “I don’t have my phone on me right now, but if you tell me your number, I can remember it.”

Troy doesn’t ask to just write it down somewhere, and later on, as he’s making his way to his own hotel room, he wonders if he should’ve done that. What if Abed forgets? What if he gets a digit wrong and can’t figure out which one’s the wrong one? What if he only said that because he didn’t actually want to call?

Then, as soon as Troy’s checked into his room, his phone rings, and the  _what if’s_ go out the window as he answers and hears that nice voice through the microphone.

**Author's Note:**

> this is such a specific au but there’s something special about putting 2010 donald glover with his big glasses and 2015 danny pudi in larry gaye: renegade male flight attendant together. trust me
> 
> i’m [lakay](https://cowboylakay.tumblr.com/) on tumblr


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